As the blimp drifted away, two F-16s were scrambled from a National Guard base at Atlantic City, New Jersey, to track it, though NORAD spokesman Navy Capt. Scott Miller said there was never any intention of shooting it down.
The blimp deflated and settled back to Earth on its own, according to Miller. He said there was an auto-deflate device aboard the blimp, but it was not deliberately activated, and it is unclear why the craft went limp.
Witnesses watched it float over a sparsely populated area, its tether snapping power lines.
Tiffany Slusser Hartkorn saw it fly over her neighborhood on the outskirts of Bloomsburg around 2:15pm and soon disappear from sight.
'I honestly was worried that there were people in it that would be injured. A neighbor down the road is thinking it knocked down a tree branch and power pole by his house that could've potentially destroyed his house,' Hartkorn said.
Wendy Schafer's first thought upon seeing the blimp near her job at a spa and salon in Bloomsburg was that a nearby school was conducting an experiment.
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